Apistogramma sp. "Breitbinden"

[rafael]

Hi Łukasz. :wink:

At the last photo the male looks like a sailboat. :biggrin:

 

[Ruki]

Probably on the next weekend I'll have 3 females for my male. :biggrin:

 

[Csababá]

Good luck.

 

[kkaaii]

Amazing tank

Thanks for sharing your tank. It's amazing! Would it be possible for you to share how you keep the filtering/water quality by having the tank like this?

thank you

 

[Ruki]

Now I'm using Fluval 205 for filtration, before I'd two internal filters with sponge.

 

[blueblue]

The fish is superb!

 

[Ruki]

Thanks Blueblue- his sons are decent too. :biggrin:
I started with this tank in AGA contest(biotope category) but my tank "was too messy with too much algae and had too little fish"- opinions of two judges...

 

[blueblue]

Oh, i will be glad to see the sons of this amazing fish.

AGA Contest: It's great to try with apisto tank... may i have a look at more photos of your AGA entry tank's setting?

 

[Ruki]

Oh, i will be glad to see the sons of this amazing fish.

AGA Contest: It's great to try with apisto tank... may i have a look at more photos of your AGA entry tank's setting?

Here link to my entry- http://showcase.aquatic-gardeners.org/2009.cgi?&op=showcase&category=1&vol=-1&id=117

 

[blueblue]

Here link to my entry- http://showcase.aquatic-gardeners.org/2009.cgi?&op=showcase&category=1&vol=-1&id=117

Hi Ruki, i tried but it's not on your entry;
is there a typo in the URL?

 

[Ruki]

Hi Ruki, i tried but it's not on your entry;
is there a typo in the URL?

That link is working smoothly at my computer. My entry has a number #117.

 

[Ruki]

Finally I've obtained 4 females for my male. Maybe they'll breed soon.
New photo of tank:

 

[dw1305]

Re: the Aquascaping contest.

Hi all,
Ruki,
I've just read the comments, I see what you mean. I don't care what Karen Randall's reputation is, the comments she made are officially clueless. I don't understand why they have a "biotope" category if that isn't what they want.

Having seen the winning entry (Gasterosteus aculeatus " 3 spine Stickleback" in a UK lake), I can pass some comment as I'm very familiar with both species and its natural habitat. First thing to say is I like it as a tank (I'm not an aquascaper so I have no comment to make about its attributes as an aquascape), but maybe they should change the title of the category to "algae free, totally unrealistic pastiche of a biotope".

For example you can see the terrestrial lichens and moss on the twigs, the sand substrate is absolutely pristine (in fact I would bet that the lake doesn't have a sand substrate) and the "locally collected rocks" look like they have quartz bands running through them, meaning that if he did get them from Cambridgeshire, they arrived in a lorry. And finally, to add insult to injury, the aquascaper only had 3 plants present, one a naturalised alien in the UK (that is now quite uncommon in the wild), one he only identified to genus "Eleocharis", of which the only truly aquatic one is a rare plant in the wild in the UK and it doesn't look like that any-way, and finally one he didn't try and put a name to. And that was the aquascape that won!

<http://showcase.aquatic-gardeners.org/2009.cgi?&op=showcase&category=1&vol=-1&id=30>

Yours bemused Darrel

 

[Ruki]

Darrel, maybe he made a big donation for AGA? :biggrin:

 

[peterK]

I'm not sure he had to. He just do a "algae free, totally unrealistic pastiche of a biotope", as Darrel wrote, and entitled his tank in a very "biotope" way. That's the trick:biggrin:

 

[ed seeley]

Well as George who created this tank is a mate, I'm going to stick up for him!

The AGA competition is all about perfection in aquatic 'scapes, not a totally realistic representation of the world. After all many nature aquariums recreate above the water scenery or are representations of them used to inspire underwater creations. They aren't really meadows or hillsides, they are interpretations of them.

If you want to see more George posted a thread about it on the UKAPS forum, http://ukaps.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=49&t=8052 or you can read it in the November edition of Practical Fishkeeping. You can even see him diving in the lake!

I'm not going to pass comment on the donation quip.

 

[Kyle]

What's the name of the floating plant in the picture? Your tank is amazing.

 

[peterK]

The AGA competition is all about perfection in aquatic 'scapes, not a totally realistic representation of the world. After all many nature aquariums recreate above the water scenery or are representations of them used to inspire underwater creations. They aren't really meadows or hillsides, they are interpretations of them.

Yes Ed, I understand that way of competitions. And I respect that. But tell me, what has "Biotope" part of it to other categories? If I make such a tank, which has truly natural looking (no need to have any algae, or so, take a look at Rio Sucuri in Brazil), I have no chance, because Biotope category has identical rules of judging as "normal" aquascaped tanks. That's more than big misunderstaning. It'd be better they resign from it. Fortunately, one tank in TOP 3 had a really good, biotope looking, I mean Malawi.

 

[dw1305]

Hi all,
Ed I have now read George's thread on UKAPS, and I'm sure he did a lot more research than many/all of the other contestants, as I said I like the tank, and having read his post I appreciate that he did the best he could with limited time and resources available to him.

I'll say straight away that I think the whole concept of the AGA contests is fairly strange, but I do appreciate that the cosmetic quality of some of plants, and the aquascapes, produced by hi-tech aquarists is truly amazing.

My major concern would be much more with category "biotope". I know that they are not "biotopes", but how many of the people looking at the contest images know this? doesn't it re-inforce the view that a clean, sterile look is "natural"? If I knew no better what would I make of Karen Randall's comments? I'm pretty sure that instead of looking at my "biofilm" or "periphyton" as an entirely natural and desirable component of the ecology of my aquarium I'd start looking at it as the demonized and "beyond the pale" "algae", which had to be ruthlessly destroyed, and pretty soon I'd be sliding down the slippery spiral of "battling" with algae, adding all sorts of chemicals to my tank etc.

cheers Darrel

 

[Ruki]

Finally my Breitbinden (probably) have spawned. One female stays under the ketapang leaves and barely goes out. :biggrin:

Male: